joshua egner

Joshua Egner

My story starts just around the time I went off to college. Disillusioned with the world (as is the norm of my generation), and scorned from some friendships gone wrong, I receded within myself. I had always been a private individual. However, this took on new form as I spent all day as part of a crowd talking to myself, and was set in place by the long retreats into nature that would fill my afternoons. In those times I came to know myself, that is how I think – my self-delusions, guiding concepts, fears, pleasures and the rest. In the wilderness I learned to value silence, and how to completely empty myself of thought. In short I experienced the great extremes, I built my world entirely from concept (knowing myself), and I felt the silent void of existence. This, along with much contemplation philosophy, led to a revelation of thought, The One. In this idea I was able to capture, at least for myself – hopefully for others, the enigmatic Way of the ancient mystics. To me this Way, their knowledge, has always been of how to reveal truth, or in other words how to represent this ineffable reality to our conscious selves.

This I feel I have achieved, but to what end? Have I started a new religion, can I now solve the world’s major problems, do I now have the answer that mystics have sought? The answer is no. What I now know is the reason mystics are enigmatic. That is because there is no Answer, no Absolute truth, no prescribed set of actions. There is only Nature, Mind and the union of the two in Will. So what now of my answer, The One, is this simply another niche philosophy to add to the pile of obscuring concepts? No, it is not because it is nothing more than a mantra, the aid in a process, which tells us, “There is always more, you can make it less in your mind” and drives us toward a holism that is required by logic. The fool takes this consistency check to be an excuse for the culling of thought, whereas the master delves into subtlety.